Tony Smith
American, 1912–1980
Black and White, White Circle
oil on canvas
30 x 24 in.
PAI.74
Untitled
1962
acrylic on a two part canvas
44.5 x 28 in.
PAI.72
Anonymous Gift
Tony Smith studied painting at the Art Students League, New York (1934–36) and attended the New Bauhaus, Chicago (1937–38), before apprenticing with Frank Lloyd Wright (1938–39). For the following two decades, he worked professionally as an architect and held teaching positions at numerous institutions. He was a Bennington College Visual Arts faculty member, 1958-61 and member of the faculty library committee. In the early 1960s, Smith turned his focus to sculpture, with his architectural background informing one of his most radical innovations—having his work industrially fabricated. Widely recognized for his large-scale, modular works produced throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Smith was included in the seminal group exhibition Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum, New York, in 1966. There have been retrospectives of his work at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (2002); and Menil Collection, Houston (2010).
Tony Smith: Paintings and Sculpture 1960-65 by
This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition ... held at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, April 26-June 23, 2001, presented in collaboration with Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Tony Smith: Architect, Painter, Sculptor by
This book is published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in the summer of 1998. The essays include Robert Storr's analysis and assessment of Smith's life and work in all mediums, in which he discusses the artist's relationship to the leading Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s, his association with the Minimalist sculptors of the 1960s, and Smith's unique place in the history of American modernist art.